Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Libertarianism and evolution don't mix

The best bit from a paper by Paul Rubin on evolution and politics: libertarianism could be unpopular today because libertarian societies would get destroyed in competition with egalitarian militaristic tribes back in the hunter-gatherer days. The paper has some great points on what prehistoric society was like -- fierce intergroup wars and competition. Hobbes/Locke/Rousseau states of nature, not so much. (While we're at it, I have to plug Boyd and Richerson's gene-culture coevolution theory.)

Evolutionary psychology has of course its own special dangers, but apparently Rubin also wrote a book on the subject of the biological basis of politics. Interesting...